Microsoft Shuns Tablets While Bringing Office to Android Phones

About a month after Microsoft released the Office app for iOS, the company launched a version of mobile Office for Android on Wednesday.

To be clear, Microsoft released the Office app for Android phones. Just like it did for iPads, refraining from providing a tablet-native app for that best-selling gadget, Microsoft is keeping the Office app away from Android tablets. Also, to download and use the software, you have to be subscribed to Microsoft's Office 365, which will run you about $100 annually. And the app will not be sold separate from Office 365.

On its blog, Microsoft announced the app for Android phones, which comes preinstalled on devices running Windows Phone 8 since November of last year:

"Today, we are launching Office Mobile for Android phones in the United States at no additional charge for Office 365 subscribers. This means that Office 365 subscribers can now work on their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents from virtually anywhere, using their Windows Phone, iPhone or Android phones."

The company says that Office Mobile for Android phones will be available for other countries over the next several weeks. Just like the iOS version, Mobile Office allows you to work on Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and some features within PowerPoint.

Once you download it and log in with your subscribed Office 365 account, you can use Word to view, edit and save documents. Commenting on documents and edits you make can be saved to the cloud through SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro, or you can send it as an email attachment. Editing tools for Word include a formatting pallet with basic highlighting, text-coloration, and font formatting tools. And there's a feature called "Resume Reading" that is optimized for the small screen: it tracks where you were working last time on the Word file, and lets you return to that part of the document without spending a long time scrolling and searching.

Excel lets you work with workbooks, worksheets, graphs, and charts with your Android device, and there's even an AutoSum tool to calculate parts of your spreadsheets on the go. Additionally, Microsoft has a simple "Create Chart" function with a half-dozen options to turn selected tables into graphic diagrams. You can also comment and format the document like in Word, and there's a search function to get you to where you need to work without looking around.

Finally, while you can't create PowerPoint files, the PowerPoint function lets you edit speaker notes and change the order of the slides, giving you a landscape mode so you can preview your presentation and a portrait mode with speaker notes on the bottom, below the presentation.

The Office Mobile app is part of Microsoft's push to gain more Office 365 subscribers, which provides Microsoft with an ongoing yearly profit from a product that they've traditionally sold as a stand-alone one-time software purchase. Now with the Mobile Office app for Android, Microsoft has provided its Office 365 customers with a working app on the majority of popular mobile phones, and come one step closer to delivering on the "365" productivity promise of its software.

However, the Redmond-based company - which is struggling to find enough buyers for its Surface RT and Pro to make the venture worth their investment - is still not launching a mobile app for iPads or Android tablets. According to Forrester Research analyst J.P. Gownder, who talked to the AP, Microsoft may be giving up as much as $1.4 billion a year in revenue by not offering iPad owners - who could buy a 365 subscription - a native Office app for their devices.

You can get the Android version here. It requires Android 4.0 or later.